I fortunately am not expected to do holiday lessons but I did bring in a
live rabbit for kids to draw during Easter last year (though I never
mentioned Easter). We had a great time with that rabbit and the kids got to
draw from life. I'm still looking for someone with a pony! Supposedly
Georgia O'Keeffe got a pony up on a table for her students to draw when she
taught in Texas.

> "In defense of the rabbit lesson.... If the objective
> is for students
> to draw a rabbit from life - from the rabbit that was
> brought into the
> classroom - then the results will all be a rabbit. Or
> if the objective
> was to draw a fish from life - the students will all
> draw the fish.
> Before you are too critical of lessons you find
> online, you might want
> to consider what the objective may have been?"
>
> The lesson I mentioned about rabbits was something I
> observed in an actual classroom. It was designed to
> tie into Easter and had all the students making rabbit
> faces out of paper plates and pre-cut construction
> paper. Naturally all of the projects looked virtually
> identical. The classroom was more like a third world
> sweatshop for holiday decorations than an actual
> public school art classroom which is was suppossed to
> be.
>
> I think the teacher could done an Easter themed
> assignment involving cutting and pasting and still
> allow the students some creativity.
>
> Of course, all of the assignments from this teacher
> was along the same lines. All the projects were
> linked to holidays and they all generally looked the
> same whether they were creating Easter bunnies,
> shamrocks, snowmen, hearts, or whatever. The only
> skills she seemed to teach was cutting, pasting, and
> coloring (including a lot of coloring of preprinted
> images).
>
> The art classes were K-4, but that's still no reason
> for such restrictive lessons.
>
>
>
>
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